Cara Black is Back

An ongoing conversation with the author of the Paris-based Aimée Leduc investigations

When we first sat down to speak your third Aimée Leduc investigation MURDER IN THE SENTIER was about to be published. With the imminent publication of MURDER IN MONTMARTRE you will have successfully guided Aimée through six investigations.

TG: How has Aimée changed from our first meeting?
Let’s see. Apart from inadvertently getting tattooed in a shady tattoo parlor in the Sentier, suffering temporary blindness in the Bastille and attempting to live healthy and meditate with her partner René at a
Cao Dai Temple, losing a boyfriend or two...we’ll find out in MURDER IN MONTMARTRE, won’t we? Aimée still drinks a lot of espresso, is always
trying to quit smoking. I hope her character has grown and my insights
into her pysche have deepened as I’ve gotten to know her better. After
all, she’s a young half-American, half-French contemporary women living
in mid-90’s Paris and faces all the concerns a woman her age does; ie
her attraction to ‘bad boys’, relationships in general, a ticking biological clock, a business to run and still no answers for the bomb explosion that killed her father in Place Vendome. I do believe her resolve has deepened and she’s more determined to find out the real story behind
her father’s murder.   

TG: How has Aimée changed you?
Well, it’s made me more determined to win the Lottery some day so I can live near her on Ile Saint-Louis. I’m definitely more fashion aware...after all Aimée’s savvy, stylish, sniffs out vintage Chanel at flea
markets and mixes them with velvet jeans, agnés b., a great scarf and I’ve got to keep up.

Seriously, I see the novels as freeze frames in a particular moment in Paris, an exploration of a particular time and specific issues framed by the background of the past that one can’t get away from in Europe. To me, it’s translated into the pace of Aimée’s life that I try to capture whether she’s walking her dog, Miles Davis, on the quai, working on computer security at Leduc Detective, coming up with rent. Since each novel takes place in a specific period of time, there’s a resonant historical backdrop,  I hope, a context with contemporary social issues that interest me - so I do lots of research. Definitely more than I did at first and the research is different for each book. I think my antenna has grown more sensitive or more attuned in exploring what it’s like for Aimée. But it’s never fine tuned enough, often I’ll find a tidbit that would have fit parfait in book three and I’m on book seven. That’s the challenge, to look at it fresh and through the eyes of a character who would be living through it. So Aimée’s constantly evolving and I along with her. Sometimes, I confess, I just go into ‘Aimée’ mode and look at things how she does...hmm... that sewer hatch, could she fit through it without ruining her Chantal Thomas stockings?

TG: How has your writing process changed?
It’s hard to explain because ‘writing,’ a famous writer whose name I
can’t remember, said, ‘is a mysterious process and one shouldn’t look at
it too closely’. But it’s about finding and capturing a voice, going
into another ‘zone’ if you will-into another world. And this world is
Paris, but it’s Aimée’s Paris. Aimée’s life intensifies in the time period as she’s pulled into criminal work that she’s vowed to give up. The series stared in November 1993 in the Marais and now, six books later we’re just up to January 1995 in Montmartre and a snowy evening.

TG: How has your relationship with Paris changed?
My insights change and continue to change. I always find something new
and unexpected when I go. But now after more than ten years of usually twice yearly visits to France and Paris, of course I’ve noticed change in the country. Even returning to Paris after six months, I see differences, in Paris, and Terrance, you’ve said so,too. We’ve talked about this. And what I look for in Paris changes on each visit...I’m always searching for a story whether it’s evoked by a smell,  an architectural jewel of a building that I stumble across or a conversation sparked in a café, I seek the kernel of the story. That hasn’t changed. Every novel has evolved from something real that I’ve heard, read or seen in Paris. There’s still that moment of joy I feel standing on a narrow, cobbled Paris street seeing
scattered rose petals in front of a fleuristes window, the art gallery next
door with a Picasso lithograph, an ancien combatants Resistants office
on the building plaque, hearing the pounding beat of French hip-hop
coming from an open Renault car window as it downshifts by and that whiff of butter coming from the boulangerie...

TG: HOW HAVE YOU CHANGED?
I’ve grown friendships in Paris. Met more and more people ie
flics=cops, detectives, writers, poets, bank administrators, and free spirits who over the years have become friends...and I think with the French it takes a long time. I feel more confident and at the same time, more nervous about what I do...which is talk to people; a plumber, a shop owner, a Ministry official and ask off the wall questions. Get them to talk about what they do, open up and try to read between the lines and discover perhaps, what they’re not saying. My interviewing skills have progressed, they’ve gone from nosey and abysmal to less nosey, more curious and sometimes still abysmal.  At least now when I show a Parisian proof that I actually am a published writer I’m taken seriously. There’s a real respect in France and Europe for someone who’s published and it gives a‘caché’ which really helps me get into those little known archives, the tunnels under the Palais Royal and for someone agreeing to meet me for coffee. It’s also given me a deeper perspective of France - this unique, amazing, sometimes infuriating country with art and manners and appreciation for the important things of life...I’m still befuddled and the essence eludes me and when I think I’ve totally understood it, I don’t. And when I do...what more will there be to write about?

How have I changed...well, a gallette des rois, the Epiphany cake’s
always on our table every January 6th and when my son finds the santon, charm inside he wears the crown, my husband seems more affectionate and he’s making homemade foie gras from Sonoma duck liver with our French neighbor, I now intently examine every espresso for a respectable tan foam, my eye seems to catch in shops on the scarf rack immediately, I ONLY watch TV5 the French channel for the news, and I often fall asleep and wakeup around midnite to find the 1995 Les Pages Jaunes, Paris yellow pages, heavy on my chest.

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